Buchanan must have looked surprised, for in response, Drummond's eyes gleamed. 'Yes. It won't be used. To put so much oil on the market would cause the price of oil to plummet. It would be an economic disaster to the oil-producing nations. When Delgado becomes president, he'll allow me to negotiate with the other oil-producing nations for them to pay Mexico not to put its oil on the market. And there's no limit to what they will pay us. As a consequence, less oil will be used. In that sense, you could say I'm a humanitarian.' Drummond smirked.
'Or maybe you just want to collect the world,' Buchanan said.
'What we're discussing is whether your argument is persuasive enough to make me want to collect you.'' Drummond squinted toward Raymond. 'Find out if he's lying about this covert special-operations group.'
7
The sun was low, adding to the gloom of the acrid smoke that drifted across the area. Buchanan coughed again as he and Holly were shoved through the haze toward the only part of the ruins that Drummond had allowed to remain intact.
'The ball court,' Drummond said.
The haze lifted enough for Buchanan to see a flat, stone, playing surface one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet wide. On each side was a wall, fifteen feet high, the top of which was a terrace from which spectators could watch. Drummond climbed steps to the terrace, followed by Delgado, a guard and Holly. She looked sick from fear. Her handcuffs had been removed. She nervously rubbed her wrists.
Another guard removed Buchanan's handcuffs, then followed the others to the terrace. Buchanan too rubbed his wrists, trying to increase the flow of blood to his numb hands. Anxiety surged through him as he studied the walls of the court, noting the hieroglyphs and the drawings engraved on the stone.
'The acoustics of the ball court are amazing.' Drummond spoke from the terrace, peering down at Buchanan. 'I'm using a normal voice, and yet it sounds as if I have a microphone.'
Despite the roar of construction equipment in the background, despite the closer crackle of flames and the occasional bark of a gunshot, Buchanan heard Drummond with remarkable clarity. The crusty voice seemed to echo from and be amplified by all points of the court.
'The game was called pok-a-tok,' Drummond said. 'If you study the engravings on the stone wall below me, you can see images of the ancient Maya playing the game. They used a latex rubber ball roughly the size and weight of a medicine ball. The intention was to hurl the ball through the vertical stone circle projecting from the middle of this side of the court. A second stone circle projects from the other side of the court. Presumably that was the goal for the opposite team. The ancient Maya considered pok-a-tok more than mere recreation. To them, it had enormous political and religious significance. In their mythology, the two gods who founded their race did so by winning this game in a contest with other gods. There is evidence that commoners were never allowed to witness the game. Only nobles, priests, and royalty. There is further evidence that the game was a prelude to human sacrifice and that it was played most often with warriors captured from other tribes.'
'The stakes were life and death.' Raymond's voice came suddenly from behind Buchanan, making him whirl.
8
What Buchanan saw stunned him. Threw his mind off balance. Assaulted his sanity. For a moment, he told himself that he had to be hallucinating, that fatigue combined with his concussion had distorted his perceptions.
But as Raymond stepped through the haze of smoke, tinted crimson by the lowering sun, Buchanan forced himself to accept that what confronted him, however grotesque, was definitely, dismayingly real.
Raymond was partially naked. He wore thick, leather pads around his waist and groin. Similar armor was strapped to his shoulders, elbows, and knees. Otherwise his body was bare, his nipples showing. His exposed muscles displayed the strength and tone that could have come only from hours of daily exercise.
Buchanan, who had been in excellent condition before he began his assignment in Mexico, had been on the move for so long and been so wearied by his various injuries that he hadn't had time for exercise and wasn't in peak condition.
Raymond's leather armor looked grotesque enough. But what added to the dismaying sense of surreality was a helmet he wore, from which long feathers of numerous brilliant colors were swept back, creating the illusion that a Mayan warrior had stepped not only through smoke but through time. In addition, he carried a large ball that he dropped to the stone court. As it struck and rolled, it caused a thunking echo that communicated how solid and heavy it was. He threw leather pads at Buchanan's feet. 'Undress and put them on.'
'Like hell,' Buchanan said.
Raymond picked up the ball and hurled it at Buchanan, who dodged but not soon enough, the drug still affecting him. The glancing impact of the ball against his left arm was startlingly painful.
'Undress and put on the armor, or you won't last thirty seconds in the game,' Raymond said.
Buchanan slowly complied, gaining time, calculating. Above him, Holly looked even more terrified. Buchanan strained to think of a way for the two of them to escape, but no plan was adequate against the guard next to Holly and the automatic weapon in his hands. The guard would shoot before Buchanan could climb the wall and get to them.
As Buchanan's naked skin felt prickly cold despite the sweat dripping from him, he strapped on the rough, thick, leather armor.
'I designed these myself,' Raymond said, 'based on the drawings on these walls.' He pointed to Buchanan's left, just below the vertical stone hoop that projected from the top of the wall. 'That engraving, in particular, interests me.'
Buchanan frowned in that direction, and for a moment, the image -a warrior in armor, with a feathered headdress - looked disturbingly like Raymond.
'When I first stepped onto this ball court,' Raymond said, 'I felt as if I'd come home. I felt as if I'd been here, as if I'd played here. Long, long ago.'
Buchanan kept staring at the image. Appalled, he realized that the warrior was clutching a severed human head, blood dripping from the neck as the warrior raised the skull by its hair.
'That's what I meant about life and death,' Raymond said. 'You see, the penalty for the losers was execution. And the winner? He not only got to stay alive. He got to be the executioner.'
'What are we talking about here?' Buchanan demanded. 'Are you telling me that if I win, I go free?'
Except for the din of construction equipment in the background, the ball court became silent.
'That's what I thought,' Buchanan said. 'For me, it's a no-win situation.'